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Multiculturalism, "Tolerance" and "Diversity":
Among other things, multiculturalism seeks to obliterate the value of a free, industrialized
civilization by declaring that such a civilization is no better than primitive
tribalism.*
Is Black History Month still needed?
How valuable, knowledge-wise, is a single month for youth who have practically the whole of human knowledge at their fingertips on their phones?
Furthermore, these African-American Millennials say they never really learned anything useful during Black History Month activities at school, and they fret
that having a formal, month-long observance gives the nation a pass to ignore black history the rest of the year. Despite all that, they'd keep it.
The downside of diversity. Diversity can bring
risks as well as benefits and perils as well as perks. There are trade-offs to be made, for example between the trust that comes from sharing
a common background and the cultural sensitivity that comes from employing people from different parts of the word.
Why Obama is Uneducated. A few years ago I participated in
a radio debate on "white privilege" with a certain man, whose name is unimportant, who had a Ph.D. in "ethnic studies." At one point he introduced an
argument by saying, "If whites are 80 percent of the population...," which prompted me to interject and point out that whites (non-Hispanic) are now
only 63 percent of America. Of course, you might think that someone with a doctorate in "ethnic studies" would know what the ethnic and racial
composition of the country is.
Homosexuals Get Duck Dy-Nasty. "Tolerance," as it
has been marketed, was always a con. [...] For one thing, tolerance always implies a negative, real or perceived; you wouldn't have to tolerate a beautiful car
or a delectable meal — you relish those things. But you might have to tolerate a cold or bad weather. Thus, tolerance is only noble in two
situations: One is when dealing with something objectively negative that cannot be eliminated, such as irremediable pain. The other is when
confronted with something you don't happen to like and could avoid, but that is objectively good or neutral; an example would be tolerating a food you detest
in order to avoid offending your hosts.
Blacks and Obama. Obama's electoral success further
confirms what I've often held: The civil rights struggle in America is over, and it's won. At one time, black Americans did not have the
constitutional guarantees enjoyed by white Americans; now we do. The fact that the civil rights struggle is over and won does not mean that
there are not major problems confronting many members of the black community, but they are not civil rights problems and have little or nothing to do
with racial discrimination.
Lawmaker: Hire more whites to run government.
Robb Pitts, a county commissioner in Atlanta, Ga., says the county needs to hire more whites. [...] Pitts, a black, said, "I would encourage the county
manager to find ways to inform all ethnicities when new positions arise and make a concerted effort to diversify our employee base." That was in a
recent email to constituents, and Fulton County Personnel Board Chairman Paul Zucca says still today the workforce "needs more diversity."
The Editor says...
Why not hire the best available workers, instead of the ones that will produce just the right mix of colors?
Multiculturalism is the
enemy of democracy. Here we go again. Brazen and brutal attacks against British and French soldiers. In broad
daylight. At the hands of homegrown Islamic extremists (Mr. Adebolajo is reported to have shouted "Allahu Akbar!" as he struck).
European conservatives reflexively clamoring for a crackdown on Islamic fundamentalism. The left reflexing reminding us that the
West is not at war with Islam. This latest horrific chapter of Islamic radicalism brings me back to a topic I have often chronicled
over the past 20 years: the specter of multiculturalism.
Minority Student
Needs. Quack multiculturalism is the name [Professor Craig] Frisby gives to the vision of multiculturalism that promotes the
falsehoods and distortions that dominate today's college agenda, sold under various names such as "valuing diversity," "being sensitive to
cultural differences" and "cultural competence." He identifies different brands of multiculturalism such as boutique, Kumbayah,
light-and-fluffy, and bean-counting multiculturalism. Insider language used to promote multiculturalism includes terms such as
"practice tolerance," "celebrate diversity," "equity with excellence" and "differences are not deficits."
Confidential,
expensive USDA sensitivity training: 'The Pilgrims were illegal aliens'. Footage of the United States Department
of Agriculture's compulsory "Cultural Sensitivity Training" program reveals USDA employees being instructed to refer to the
Pilgrims as "illegal aliens" and minorities as "emerging majorities" — at "a huge expense" to taxpayers. The
video clips were made public Thursday evening by the conservative government accountability group Judicial Watch, which obtained
them through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request made on May 18, 2012.
A review of "The Disuniting
of America," by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.. Today, says Schlesinger, the American identity is in jeopardy as multiculturalism
and Afrocentrism elevate racial and ethnic over national affiliation. At the end of this road, he warns, lie Yugoslavia and other
contemporary battlegrounds of racial and ethnic separatism. While the analogy may seem a touch overwrought, there can be no question
that multiculturalists are playing with weapons that can wreak havoc on our already inadequate schools, our social structure, and economy.
Shut Up or Die, the
Muslim Protesters Explained. Thanks to multiculturalism, we can't even stand up for ourselves in a simple standoff
between barbarism and free speech. We've become so obsessed with being unoffensive that we can't bring ourselves to make the
most basic criticisms of group behavior, even when that behavior is violent. This applies both at home and abroad.
In the case of the Libya attack two weeks ago, the resulting approach on the part of some liberals has been, in a word, cowardly.
Europe's Multicultural Nightmare.
Unfortunately, the Mannheim riot is not an isolated incident. Germans and other Europeans are becoming more accustomed to
seeing their municipal police forces attacked by people who, for the most part, had been allowed into Europe under the multicultural
banner or asylum laws.
Stubborn Ignorance. Academic intelligentsia, their media,
government and corporate enthusiasts worship at the altar of diversity. Despite budget squeezes, universities have created diversity
positions, such as director of diversity and inclusion, manager of diversity recruitment, associate dean for diversity, vice president of
diversity and perhaps minister of diversity. This is all part of a quest to get college campuses, corporate offices and government
agencies to "look like America." For them, part of looking like America means race proportionality.
Victimology
and the Phony 'Digital Divide'. Multiculturalism has forced us to believe that some people's
opinions are valuable simply because of their skin color. Multiculturalism is therefore in conflict
with Dr. Martin Luther King's call to judge people not "by the color of their skin but by the content
of their character." Liberalism demands that we judge people according to their group identity,
victim status, socioeconomic level — anything but their character.
Diversity, Inc.
[Scroll down] Once the government insisted on proportional representation, there really was no limit to extending
that logic. But do we really wish for a Ministry of Diversity that will begin to ask all sorts of repugnant
questions? After all, in 2011, professional sports teams are not very diverse. The Postal Service, with
its coveted benefits, has a disproportionate number of African-American employees. Women are vastly
overrepresented as KŠ8 teachers, and they graduate from college at disproportionately high rates compared to
their male counterparts. We have not had a white-male secretary of state in 15 years. The
Latino community in California still refers to itself as a "minority," even though it is now the largest
so-called ethnic group in the state, where there is no longer any majority.
Colorado
day-care center proposal: Dolls must represent at least three different races.
Netherlands
abandoning multiculturalism. In a landmark turnabout, one of the cornerstones of contemporary
liberalism is being rejected by one of the fountainheads of liberalism. The politically correct
doctrine of multiculturalism is heading for decline, as Holland, one of the most socially liberal societies on
earth, is reversing its former policy of multiculturalism. Soeren Kern, writing for Hudson New York,
covers an important story that has gotten almost no notice from the American media, which wishes to pretend
that multiculturalism works just fine.
Multicultural Rot in the Melting Pot.
Europe is finally awakening from its self-imposed Rip Van Winkle deep slumber to discover that multiculturalism
is actually cultural rot and ripping its countries apart. From the United Kingdom to France to
Spain to Germany, leaders or former leaders have decried multiculturalism as a poisonous experiment
in their nations.
A Requiem for
Multiculturalism. Stop the presses! The British, French and German heads of state agree on
something: Cameron, Sarkozy and Merkel have all recently declared multiculturalism a failure.
Like the related dogma of diversity, multiculturalism is so deeply embedded in the lexicon of liberalism
that it has become axiomatic.
Multiculturalism has
failed. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has joined the chorus. The other day, he said,
"My answer is clearly yes, it is a failure." The "it" was multiculturalism, and he was on French national
television. In pronouncing multiculturalism defunct, the French president joins German Chancellor Angela
Merkel, former Australian Prime Minister John Howard, Spain's former Premier Jose Maria Aznar and, most
recently, British Prime Minister David Cameron in heaving a failed policy into history's dustbin.
Multiculturalism
Hits The Wall. Multiculturalism is the most recent, and perhaps final, expression of the late
20th-century left-wing ascendancy. It is a completely synthetic doctrine, formulated without reference to any
perceptible element of the quotidian world. Although derived in format and rhetoric from the civil rights
movement, it has no relationship with the ideas or hopes expressed by King, Abernathy, Rustin or any other legitimate
civil rights leader. While the civil rights movement was founded in opposition to the odious practice of legal
racial segregation, multiculturalism had no such concrete agenda. It was based almost completely on abstract
academic theories derived in equal part from black racial extremism and Marxism, purporting to define the relationship
between the dominant "white" race and all other races.
Why
'Multi-Kulti' Is Failing in Europe. Multiculturalism just doesn't work in Germany, according to
Chancellor Angela Merkel. Speaking to the youth association of her Christian Democrat Union party (CDU),
she said that the "multi-kulti" concept that "we are now living side-by-side and are happy about it ... this
approach has failed, utterly." Merkel described this as living in "parallel societies" similar to the
Chinatowns of New York and San Francisco or the Little Italy in Philadelphia. Merkel's comments were made
a day after Horst Seehofer, the Christian Social Union (CSU) premier of Bavaria, told the same assembly that
"multiculturalism is dead."
The Multicultural
Cult. Somebody eventually had to say it — and German chancellor Angela Merkel
deserves credit for being the one who had the courage to say it out loud. Multiculturalism has
"utterly failed." Multiculturalism is not just a recognition that different groups have different
cultures. We all knew that, long before multiculturalism became a cult that has spawned mindless
rhapsodies about "diversity," without a speck of evidence to substantiate its supposed benefits.
Germany's
Merkel: Multiculturalism Is Kaput. Germany's leader confronts head-on the consequences of essentially
open borders and virtually unrestricted immigration to German society. What they have there, she says,
is a failure to assimilate.
PC bureaucrats
making themselves look really stupid. Nothing makes me laugh harder than a dimwitted race
grievance industry bureaucrat fired up on diversity rhetoric attempting to outwit the general public by
making up phony evidence of inclusiveness, and failing miserably.
Celebrate
Diversity Unto Death. I pretty much said what I had to say about the Fort Hood massacre in the
first couple of weeks, because it was perfectly obvious within about 48 hours that 14 people
(including an unborn child) had died so that "diversity" might live.
The 'Diversity' Sham.
It has been 6½ years since the U.S. Supreme Court, in Grutter v. Bollinger, upheld the legality
of racial discrimination in university admissions for the purpose of realizing "the educational benefits that
flow from a diverse student body." Longstanding precedent requires the court to apply "strict scrutiny"
to any claim justifying discrimination on the basis of race. ... But there is reason to doubt whether
"diversity," as practiced by American higher education today, has any educational benefits at
all — never mind whether those benefits are sufficient to justify discrimination.
Diversity Has Jumped the Shark.
Never in recorded history has diversity been anything but a problem. Look at Ireland with its Protestant
and Catholic populations, Canada with its French and English populations, Israel with its Jewish and Palestinian
populations. Or consider the warring factions in India, Sri Lanka, China, Iraq, Czechoslovakia (until
it happily split up), the Balkans and Chechnya. Also look at the festering hotbeds of tribal warfare —
I mean the beautiful mosaics — in Third World hellholes like Afghanistan, Rwanda and South Central L.A.
The Vilification of
Rush. We as Americans have always been the great melting pot of society and the world.
We want everyone to become just like us. The Minority Thought Pattern now wants a nineteen-burner
stove with every pot separate and different, and that has given us multiculturalism today. Multiculturalism
in its present form has already proven unworkable.
General Casey's
Diverse Army. I am missing something here. After the attack and murder of 13 innocent
people by an apparent imbedded radical Jihadist in the US Army, General Casey said on Meet The Press, "Our
diversity, not only in our Army, but in our country, is a strength. And as horrific as this tragedy
was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that's worse." ... I took the oath of office a few times
in my military career and for the life of me I don't ever remember the word "diversity" being in it.
The
cost of a diverse Naval Academy. The Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead announced in Annapolis
recently that "diversity is the number one priority" at the Naval Academy. The Naval Academy superintendent, Vice
Adm. Jeffrey Fowler, echoed him. Everyone understands that "diversity" here means nonwhite skins.
Victims Of Tolerance?
So why did they all tolerate his abusive behavior for so long? Was it because he was a foreign student?
Was it because he was a minority? Was it because multiculturalism has robbed us of our last sense, even
our instinct for survival? Or was it simply because the campus lifestyle, more than the real world,
tends to accommodate, even nurture, idiosyncratic behavior? Whatever it was, the kid-glove treatment the
university culture afforded him amounted to a mass enabling of Cho's psychotic behavior.
The multi-cultural
one way street: Demands for "tolerance" in the name of multiculturalism apply only to wealthy,
predominantly white countries. And within them, only to whites. A shocking situation in Denmark
illustrates the point.
Too
Much Tolerance. We are ever admonished to respect differences, to be tolerant of what we might
think of as bizarre behavior. We are told that among the worst of sins is to be judgmental about how
others behave. Multiculaturalism is what we are about. Diversity is our strength. All
cultures, all people, all lifestyles are to be treated equally. At Blacksburg on Monday, we learned
that there is such a thing as too much tolerance.
Multiculturalism
has a down side. Concerns about the potential downsides of state-sanctioned multiculturalism have
finally reached the long-deaf ears, and are now being given a voice by, Canada's elite chattering classes.
We Are All Cowards Now.
What's so disconcerting is that a man at the top of his profession, with a wife at the top of hers, in a country that has
rewarded his accomplishments and whose people have made epic strides toward the creation of an equitable society, lectures
us in a way that can only divide us. But that's the infernal paradox of multiculturalism. It preaches tolerance
but practices divisiveness. It pretends to be even-handed but imposes severe restrictions on speech. It censors
brilliant scholars and independent-minded students. And then the Attorney General criticizes those who don't want to
play that self-destructive game.
Bowling With Our Own: In
the 41 sites [Robert] Putnam studied in the U.S., he found that the more diverse the neighborhood, the less
residents trust neighbors. This proved true in communities large and small, from big cities like Los
Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Boston to tiny Yakima, Washington, rural South Dakota, and the mountains of
West Virginia.
Multiculturalism: The
New Racism. By embracing "diversity," multiculturalism claims to extinguish
racism. Far from being a cure for racism, multiculturalism is racism
in a new, self-righteous guise. The purpose of this ad hoc newsletter
is to describe the efforts of the Ayn Rand Institute to oppose
multiculturalism and to defend the superiority of Western Civilization.
The menace
of multiculturalism: It's not easy to dislodge a trendy fad, particularly among the public
intellectuals and the aspiring sophisticates of the chattering class, but "multiculturalism" may be getting
an intellectual re-examination.
Keep the Immigrants,
Deport the Multiculturalists. So, whatever happened to immigration as a presidential campaign
issue? In the early caucus and primary states — Iowa, New Hampshire, South
Carolina — the media assured us that immigration was foremost on the minds of voters.
You couldn't watch a Republican debate without the issue dominating a good chunk of the discussion.
Chirpiness that'll
be the death of us: "Multiculturalism" is a unicultural phenomenon. It exists only as a
Western fetish, and we don't believe in it, not really. Most people, given the choice, want to live in an
advanced Western society. That's why even impeccably PC lefties refer carelessly to other cultures as
"developing nations": the phrase assumes they're "developing" into something closer to ours, because
that's the direction of progress. Even hard-core multiculturalists only want to live in a Western society.
For one thing, that's the only place you can make a living as a multiculturalist.
Immigration taboos:
There are thousands of Americans who might still be alive if we had banned immigration from Saudi Arabia — and
perhaps that might be more important than the rhetoric of the intelligentsia. In that rhetoric, all
differences between peoples are magically transformed into mere "stereotypes" and "perceptions." This
blithely ignores hard data showing, for example, that people who come here from some countries are ten times
more likely to go on welfare as people from some other countries.
Multiculturalism's
War on Education: One text acclaims the inhabitants of West Africa in pre-Columbian times for
having prosperous economies and for establishing a university in Timbuktu; but it ignores their brutal trade in
slaves and the proliferation of far more consequential institutions of learning in Paris, Oxford and elsewhere
in Europe. Some books routinely lionize the architecture of the Aztecs, but purposely overlook or
underplay the fact that they practiced human sacrifices. A few textbooks seek to portray Islam as
peaceful in part by distorting the concept of "jihad" ("sacred war") to mean an internal struggle to surmount
temptation and evil. Islam's wars of religious conquest are played down.
The Fraud of Multiculturalism:
Without a doubt most people in this country would agree that the government schools are failing our children.
The government's pat answer to the problem is always a lack of funds, but I hope to convince you that the true
problem behind the failure of these schools is far more sinister than that. The real culprit is not a
lack of money but the evil programs being advanced under the umbrella of a term called Multiculturalism, better
known as diversity.
Multiculturalism cannot
survive. Future historians of the phenomenon known as "multiculturalism" that the West bone-headedly adopted
towards the end of the second millennium will note the precise time when it was dealt a mortal wound. It was at
8:46 on Tuesday morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when the first of the four commercial airliners hijacked by Islamist
terrorists — all of Arab origin — struck the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City.
America's Founding Ideals: As America
descends into multiculturalism, public recognition of the superiority of America's heritage is considered
uncivil — and possibly even illegal.
The Meaning Of 'Is'…
Multiculturalism is simply moral equivalency on a national or cultural scale; it helps strip our society of the idea
of objective moral standards, a sense of right and wrong. Why would "liberals" want that? Because the
socialist society they seek requires there be no standards or values to compete with those ordained by the government;
after all, socialists maintain, those rules are for the good of all.
Once Upon a Rhyme: Once upon a time,
students had their heads crammed full with poetry by great old writers — the "Dead White Men" so
reviled by today's multiculturalists.
Coalition Resists "Tolerance"
Police: The group plans to place an ad in at least one major U.S. newspaper. "It will be
about the extent to which the left in this country has misused and misapplied the term "tolerance" to impose a
rigid, politically correct ideology on America," the group's national director explained.
Race and
Politics: Part IV. One of the most ominous developments of our time has been the
multicultural dogma that all cultures are equal. It is one of the many unsubstantiated assertions
that have become fashionable among self-congratulatory elites, with hard evidence being neither asked for
nor offered.
Back to the top of the page
"Profiling":
Racial
profiling: What is racial profiling, and is it racist? We can think of
profiling as using cheap-to-observe characteristics as indicators or proxies for
more-costly-to-observe characteristics.
Discrimination: The
Law vs. Morality. Racial issues can be contentious, but they can be made
even more so when the terms used in discussions of racial phenomena are ambiguous. Because
words can and do have multiple meanings in everyday usage, one goal of this paper is to
suggest operational definitions of terms such as "discrimination," "preferences," and
"prejudice," so that one phenomenon is not confused with another.
If the profile
fits… When there is a 100 percent chance, it ceases to be a profile. It's called
a "description of the suspect." This is not a psychological judgment about an ethnic group — it is an all-points
bulletin: Warning! The next terrorist to board a commercial flight will be an Arab or
Muslim male.
Profiling petulance:
It is clear, whether we like it or not, or want to say it or not, that there is a strong correlation between
committing terrorist acts and being a Muslim, and being black and high rates of crime. That means if
one is trying to deter terrorism and in some cases capture a criminal, he would expend greater investigatory
resources on Muslims and blacks.
Airport-security firm at mercy of
Muslims: EEOC case forced company to rehire Arabs, instate Islamic-sensitivity
training program.
Profiling Needed:
Most security resources should be spent scrutinizing Caucasian males, particularly those with a Middle Eastern appearance.
Back to the top of the page
Reverse Discrimination:
White
is not right: Campus admins ask for help weeding out white people. Western Washington
University sent a questionnaire to students asking them for advice on how the administration could
succeed at making sure that in future years, "we are not as white as we are today." The question
notes that WWU's racial make up does not perfectly reflect the nation at large, and asks students to
consider strategies that other universities have used to focus on skin color as the paramount
indicator of a student-applicant's worth. The president of WWU has stated that his explicit
goal is to reduce the white population on campus, according to Campus Reform.
The Editor says...
Substitute "black" for "white" and imagine the uproar that would ensue.
TSA Wants to Hire 'Economically Disadvantaged
Woman Owned Small Business'. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is looking exclusively for an "economically disadvantaged woman
owned small business" when it awards its next $30 million contract for security training. The agency announced a solicitation for a company to conduct
training for its Inter-Modal Security and Training Exercise Program (I-Step) last week. [...] An economically disadvantaged woman is one who earns less than
$350,000 a year, with a net worth not greater than $750,000.
The Editor asks...
What happened to "equal employment opportunity without regard to race or gender"?
Lesbian boss 'fired me for being straight'.
A married, heterosexual gym teacher at a tony Upper West Side private school was fired because his lesbian supervisor disapproved of his "traditional family
status," the canned teacher claims in a new Manhattan lawsuit. Gregory Kenney, 50, taught gym at the Trinity School on W. 91st St.
for 16 years before he was let go in June 2012.
Pentagon training manual: white
males have unfair advantages. A controversial 600-plus page manual used by the military to train its Equal Opportunity officers teaches
that "healthy, white, heterosexual, Christian" men hold an unfair advantage over other races, and warns in great detail about a so-called "White Male
Club." "Simply put, a healthy, white, heterosexual, Christian male receives many unearned advantages of social privilege, whereas a black,
homosexual, atheist female in poor health receives many unearned disadvantages of social privilege," reads a statement in the manual created by the
Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute (DEOMI).
The Editor asks...
What does "social privilege" have to do with the Army?
College Kicks Out Afrobeat Band for Being "Too
White". Apparently bands now have to be the same race as the music they're playing. That's going to be a problem. So no more white
rappers or black classical musicians are allowed. [...] America may be ready for a black man in the White House, but apparently it's not ready for a white
Afrofunk band.
Band loses college gig because [they are] 'too
white'. A popular jazz band named Shokaboza that "blends jazz and old school funk, with a West African beat" has just been told by
Hampshire College in Massachusetts that it is "too white" to be allowed to perform a scheduled Halloween party gig on campus.
HUD's Power Grab. [Scroll down] Bear with me as I report
the basics of the new policy, beginning with the purpose of AFFH, which the rule says is "to improve fair housing choice for all." People possess improved
choice when they "have the information, options, and protection to live where they choose without unlawful discrimination and other barriers related to race,
color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin, or handicap." And while "all" people should have such choice, the focus of the rule is on accomplishing
better choice for blacks and Hispanics in particular.
Campus Roundup.
Amherst College in Massachusetts, long known as one of the most left-leaning liberal arts campuses in the nation, added several "diversity seats" to
their Student Senate, which are reserved for groups that have been "historically silenced." But when conservative student Ted Hertzberg applied
for one of the seats citing the fact that only 2 out of 160 professors at the school are registered Republicans, he was rejected.
The other four applicants for the seats — an international student, a gay student, a Latino student and an Asian student — were
all accepted.
More diverse = less white.
New Hispanic Chief Judge
Calls For More Jury Diversity. Born in Chicago to immigrant parents, Ruben Castillo became the first Hispanic Judge to lead the busy federal
court district that includes his hometown and proclaimed on Tuesday [7/2/2013] that one of his priorities will be helping ensure that juries are more diverse.
An Uncontrollable Ego. Perhaps the most damaging Leftist
assault ever was reverse discrimination to make up for white racial sins going back to the slave trade that ended in 1865; that racialist revenge narrative
still drives reverse discrimination, forty years after the start of "affirmative" action. It will never end, as long as there is a penny to be made
on racial blackmail.
'Whites need not
apply' at D.C. labor board? Ondray Harris, the African-American executive director of the Public Employee Relations
Board of the District of Columbia, stepped down last week. [...] Harris claimed in his letter that two members of the board, Don
Wasserman and Ann Hoffman, complained over his hiring of a white female, Erin Wilcox, because they perceived her "as being
conservative or politically right-of-center." According to Harris, at a meeting on Nov. 8, 2012, Hoffman declared
that "somebody with a resume like hers doesn't belong here" and "should never work here."
'Any race except Caucasian'.
A casting call for a new host of a children's program on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the taxpayer supported, government-owned
television and radio network of Canada, accidentally told the truth, when it specified "any race except Caucasian."
Parents
Upset Over Tutoring Program That Excluded Whites. A Colorado school principal is apologizing after he mailed parents a
letter informing them that an after-school tutoring program was for non-whites only. Andre Pearson, the principal at Mission
Viejo Elementary School in Aurora, also left a voice mail message confirming that the program excluded whites.
Elementary school bans white kids
from tutoring. An elementary school principal in the Denver suburbs told parents that white children would be excluded
from an after-school tutoring initiative. Andre C. Pearson, the principal at Mission Viejo Elementary in Aurora, Colorado
sent letters home to parents informing them that only students of color are eligible for the program, KJCT, the local ABC affiliate,
reports.
Black
principal bans white children from after school tutoring program. This is an amazing story. In short, Andrea
Pearson, Mission Viejo Elementary school principal in Colorado sent a letter home with students that informed the parents of an
after school tutoring program for students of color only — no white kids allowed.
Racial Favoritism and the Atlanta
Symphony Orchestra. Earlier this year, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO) decided to disinvite two predominantly white high school
choral groups from performance in the ASO's holiday concert. The ASO's decision was reportedly motivated by the high schools' lack of diversity,
which caused a stir among people who believe in racial justice as opposed to racial favoritism.
'Stop Being So Anglo'.
"Allegations of racism and other discrimination against San Francisco Housing Authority Executive Director Henry Alvarez are flying in
lawsuits filed by his subordinates," the San Francisco Examiner reports. It's a man-bites-dog story inasmuch as Alvarez is black
and his accusers are white — the reverse of the usual race-discrimination stereotype.
Suit calls S.F. housing head bully,
racist. The San Francisco Housing Authority, which runs more than 6,000 units of public housing for the city's poor, is headed by
an executive director who discriminates against white employees in favor of African Americans and regularly employs offensive, outlandish language
and behavior in the workplace, according to a lawsuit filed by the agency's own lawyer.
11 Chicago Cops Sue City, Accusing Rahm
Emanuel of Discrimination. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is named in a federal lawsuit from 11 of the city's police officers, alleging that the
mayor unlawfully removed them from his security detail when he took office in 2011. The officers, all of white or Hispanic descent, claim Emanuel, who was
elected mayor in 2011, replaced senior members of his security detail with volunteers who contributed to the mayor's campaign. They also allege that African
American officers with less seniority were given preferential treatment by being kept on Emanuel's team.
Paterson Aides Said to
Have Sought Race-Based Changes to Security Detail in '08. Aides to New York's first African-American governor wanted a
police entourage that looked more like their boss, so they made an unusual request to the State Police: Replace
at least 10 white troopers assigned to protect Gov. David A. Paterson with black or Latino officers.
White firefighters are awarded
$2.7 million in bias case. Twelve white Buffalo firefighters will get an average of $230,430 each in
back pay, pension benefits and damages — a total of almost $2.77 million — for
emotional distress because the City of Buffalo illegally passed them over for promotions, a state judge has ruled.
The 12 men sued the city in 2007, contending that the city illegally allowed two promotional lists to expire
because minority firefighters had fared poorly on civil service exams.
Obama: Whites need not
apply. The White House issued an executive order on Thursday [8/18/2011] titled "Establishing a
Coordinated Government-wide Initiative to Promote Diversity and Inclusion in the Federal Workforce." The
purpose of the order is "to promote the federal workplace as a model of equal opportunity, diversity and
inclusion." In other words, it would be better for the government if public-spirited white workers
sought employment elsewhere. Lost amid all the politically correct box-checking is the principle that
the most qualified person should be hired for a job.
"Promote diversity and inclusion" means, "Don't hire white males."
Obama
orders federal agencies to focus on diversity. President Obama issued an executive order Thursday
intended to coordinate a "government-wide initiative to promote diversity and inclusion in the federal workforce."
The order creates a council of deputy agency chiefs and federal workers tasked with developing a government-wide
plan to improve diversity in recruitment, training and promotion of federal workers.
The Myth
of White Privilege. Because of the fashionable discrimination known as affirmative
action, whites (males especially) are often untouchables in the job market. And examples are
legion. Talk-show host Michael Savage has often mentioned that after he earned his Ph.D., he
had trouble finding a job in his chosen field and was told in so many words that "white men need
not apply."
Is the NCAA
Anti-Male? In 1972, Congresswoman Patsy Mink authored an amendment to the Civil Rights Act of
1964. ... The law was called Title IX. The question now is whether this admirable idea has
evolved into a law that is anti-male, and particularly anti-black male.
Federal Jury Finds...
East
St. Louis Discriminated In Not Hiring White Officers. Two black residents of East St. Louis won a
civil rights lawsuit this week in southern Illinois complaining that they were harassed and discriminated against
when they recommended that the predominately black city hire a white police chief and white police officers.
At Justice, It Just Keeps
Getting Worse. The Civil Rights Division has blocked a much-needed reform of a local school
board in S.C., once again showing it has no interest in protecting minority voters if they are white.
DOJ
to white male bullying victims: Tough luck. The administration's anti-bullying campaign
has been ongoing since the beginning of Mr. Obama's term. ... Here is the catch. DOJ will only
investigate bullying cases if the victim is considered protected under the 1964 Civil Rights legislation.
In essence, only discrimination of the victim's race, color, religion, sex or will be considered by DOJ.
The overweight straight white male who is verbally and/or physically harassed because of his size can
consider himself invisible to the Justice Department.
Fired white
worker files discrimination suit against E.C. health center. Taunts of "snowflake" and "honky"
and KKK references peppered Lois Sinder's days working in an all-black department at an East Chicago health
center between 2005 and 2009, according to court records. Sinder was the only white employee in the Lake
County Nursing and Rehabilitation Center's dietitian department, states a federal civil suit filed last week,
and her black co-workers did not let her forget it.
'Post-Racial' Racialism.
In the New Black Panthers case, Justice refused to protect the rights of white voters. Two career prosecutors
have now sworn that high-level Obama appointees running the Civil Rights Division scuttled an open-and-shut case
of voter intimidation against nightstick-wielding black thugs at a Philly poll in 2008. They also testified
that the division has a do-not-prosecute policy if victims are white and offenders black. If that bias weren't
bad enough, check out what's going on in the division's housing and civil enforcement section.
More
about the Black Panthers scandal.
Lawsuit alleges
discrimination against white officers by L.A. Airport Police. One current and two former Los
Angeles Airport Police officers have filed a lawsuit accusing department officials of discriminating against
white officers and giving black officers preferential treatment in promotions and disciplinary action.
The suit, filed last week in Los Angeles County Superior Court, alleges that black officers were promoted over
whites despite receiving lower scores on promotional exams and that white officers were disciplined more harshly
for misconduct compared with black officers facing similar accusations.
Diversity and
the Myth of White Privilege. Forty years ago, as the United States experienced the civil
rights movement, the supposed monolith of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant dominance served as the whipping
post for almost every debate about power and status in America. After a full generation of such
debate, WASP elites have fallen by the wayside and a plethora of government-enforced diversity policies
have marginalized many white workers. The time has come to cease the false arguments and allow
every American the benefit of a fair chance at the future.
Reverse Discrimination at
Boeing: Boeing's employment policies specifically favor minorities in hiring
and promotions. Boeing suppliers and subcontractors must be the "correct" race, gender
and ethnicity in order to do business with the aerospace giant.
City
Hall hears accusations of DART racial hiring. Allegations of hiring discrimination at the DART
transit agency have now spilled over to Dallas City Hall. Community leaders, frustrated over the lack of
action by DART officials are now asking Dallas City council members to investigate. Former DART employee
Rebecca Williams is among at least five people who have filed federal discrimination complaints against their
old bosses. Williams says she was fired after complaining about being ordered to hire Hispanics
underqualified for the job.
Reverse Discrimination at Kodak: The photo
and imaging giant aggressively excludes non-minorities. Kodak's aggressive, forced-diversity policies and
procedures actively exclude non-minority employees, suppliers and subcontractors.
Former state employee wins $150,000 in reverse
discrimination case. Mark Pasternak said he lost his state job helping troubled youths because
he couldn't stand working under a black boss who called him racist names like "cracker," "polack" and "stupid
white boy." Pasternak was dismissed from his position as a youth worker with the state Office of
Children and Family Services in 1999. But today, he feels some relief and vindication.
Is A New Civil Rights Movement on the
Horizon? In Clayton County, Georgia, the predominately black population recently elected a new sheriff.
On his first day, he fired 27 white employees … They were told that their replacements would be black. In
New Orleans, Louisiana, the predominately black population recently elected its first black District Attorney, Eddie
Jordan. He immediately fired 53 of the 77 white employees in the office, and replaced them with black employees
who were less experienced and who scored lower on performance evaluations.
New Orleans DA loses race-firing appeal.
The New Orleans district attorney lost his fight Wednesday [8/15/2007] against a ruling that said he violated
the civil rights of dozens of white employees when he fired them after taking office in 2003 and replaced them
with black workers.
Race and Crime in New Orleans:
For many critics, the disarray in the DA's office can be traced to a decision [District Attorney Eddie]
Jordan made shortly after being elected to a six-year term in 2002. During the campaign, Mr. Jordan
pledged to make the DA's office look "more like New Orleans," code words, many assumed, for hiring more black
staffers and attorneys. Using a "cultural-diversity report" compiled by his transition team, Mr. Jordan
proceeded to systematically fire veteran white staffers and replace them with African Americans with
little or no experience.
White Male Denied Contracts with
U.S. Dept. of Transportation. DOT was enthusiastic about hiring Fay
Communications until they found out the owner is white.
Whites need not
apply for this college class. Republicans are fighting what they see as "registration discrimination"
at the University of Colorado after learning about a class that's only for minority or first-generation students.
"It's purely and blatantly segregationist," said Brad Jones, chairman of CU's College Republicans.
Update:
University of
Colorado Drops Diversity Class Limited to "Students of Color". The
threat of a civil rights lawsuit has prompted the University of Colorado to drop
a segregated class restricted to minorities and first-generation college students. The
change of heart comes after three students vowed to sue the university for
racial discrimination.
White
man wins race discrimination suit against city. A white man who claimed he was
the victim of racial discrimination by the city of San Francisco when he was denied a
promotion at the airport has been awarded $30,600 in damages by
a San Mateo County jury.
"Too many white faces".
After publicly complaining about a "white dominated administration," a board member with the public library system
for Atlanta and Fulton County in Georgia demoted seven white librarians "because of the color of their skin,"
and then tried to call it a "reorganization."
The New Segregation: Racism in America, Then and
Now. Both segregation and neo-segregation are opposed to the idea of a colorblind society and to
individual rights. Both segregation and neo-segregation see a person as primarily a member of a racial
unit, not as an individual to be evaluated on his or her merits.
Black-focused school gains ground.
Some called it segregation, "the very thing Martin Luther King marched against," said retired teacher Winston
Clement. Others hailed African-centred schools as the best hope for black teens — "that would give
our kids a vision of their own history, it should have happened a long time ago," said mother Aldyth Frater.
"Everyone says it would be segregation, but our schools are segregated anyway," said parent Andrew Murphy.
Attorney says admissions and hiring policies
perpetuate racial segregation: A conservative attorney says the outcome of two University of
Michigan affirmative action cases may have a substantial impact on pre-collegiate schools.
Black Racism: The Hate Crime
That Dare Not Speak Its Name. While the federal government rushes to Los Angeles to investigate
an incident in which a handcuffed youth was slammed into the hood of a car and punched by an officer, a pall of
silence still blankets the horrendous racial murder of four young people whose murderers are now on
trial. The difference in the responses to these two stories can hardly be attributed to anything other
than the skin color of the perpetrators and the victims involved. Apparently the sexual torture and
brutal executions of four promising youngsters is of no interest to the nation's moral guardians, because
the victims happen to be white.
Whites File Bias Suit Against Black
College: Five white professors in Salisbury, N.C., have filed a lawsuit against Livingstone
College, claiming the private college discriminated against them because of the color of their skin.
Why Elitists Dump on the
South: To preserve its illusion of national innocence, the United States projects its "dark"
side onto the South, a Penn State geographer says. He found that people indulged in one of the last forms
of bigotry acceptable in polite society. Those who wouldn't dream of mocking other groups were
comfortable making jokes about white Southerners.
"Diversity" as Doublespeak for
Ideological Conformity: What's called for and practiced by college administrators, courts and
administrative agencies is anything but a defense of individual rights, freedom from conformity and a doctrine
of live-and-let-live. Instead, diversity is an increasingly popular catchword for all kinds of
conformity — conformity in ideas, actions and speech.
Rocky Mountain Bigot? The John Rocker
zero-tolerance-for-bigotry standard only applies to white people.
Denny's victory may show the way for other
companies: One of the biggest victims of anti-white racism is the restaurant chain Denny's, which
since 1994 has had to shell out more than $50 million in settlement costs and legal fees to assuage the
alleged heartbreak various non-white patrons experienced when they supposedly found themselves denied service
because of their race. Now, after years of groveling before the idols of Afro-racism, Denny's is fighting
back — and winning. There may be a lesson here for much of corporate America.
Federal death penalty biased
against whites: A study shows whites are likelier to face the federal death penalty, Attorney
General John Ashcroft told a House committee Wednesday — and he made the startling claim that
that anti-white bias is not racial bias.
The $600 Million Blacks Only
Lottery: The U.S. Department of Agriculture has paid $600 million to black farmers,
admitting it discriminated. Of course, this has had very little coverage in the news media. As with
so many other scandals in the Clinton administration, they have chosen not to report it.
Back to the top of the page
Academics:
Muslim
Sues Latino Caucus for Not Giving Her Latino Scholarship. A Muslim student with a
Muslim father and Latino mother is suing the Illinois Legislative Latino Caucus Foundation (ILLCF)
for not giving her a scholarship even though she was a mediocre student and was accused of faking a
letter of recommendation.
University
of Texas can use race as factor in admissions, court rules. The University of Texas
can consider race in undergraduate admissions to promote diversity, a federal appeals court ruled
Tuesday [7/15/2014]. Acting in a lawsuit that the U.S. Supreme Court had sent back last year,
Judge Patrick Higginbotham wrote that considering race boosted the university's efforts to assemble
a diverse student body. "Universities may use race as part of a holistic admissions program where
it cannot otherwise achieve diversity," Higginbotham wrote. "This interest is compelled by the
reality that university education is more the shaping of lives than the filling of heads with
facts — the classic assertion of the humanities."
The Editor says...
In other words, indoctrination and multiculturalism are more important than marketable skills.
UCLA
prof says stats prove school's admissions illegally favor blacks. Public universities
in California are barred from using race as a factor in admitting students, but a UCLA professor who
once served on its admissions oversight team says he has proof they do it anyway. While the first
round of admissions consideration is handled fairly, African-American students are nearly three
times as likely to make it out of the "maybe" pile than equally-qualified white students, and more
than twice as likely as Asians, according to Tim Groseclose, a political science professor at the
school and author of a new book [...]
Coming
End to Racial Preferences. Last week's U.S. Supreme Court 6-2 ruling in Schuette v.
Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action et al. upheld Michigan's constitutional amendment that bans
racial preferences in admission to its public universities. Justice Sonia Sotomayor lashed out at
her colleagues in a bitter dissent, calling them "out of touch with reality." She went on to make
the incredible argument that the amendment, which explicitly forbids racial discrimination, itself
amounts to racial discrimination. Her argument was that permissible "race-sensitive admissions
policies," the new name for racial preferences, both serve the compelling interest of obtaining the
educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body and inure people to the benefit of racial
minorities. By the way, no one has come up with hard evidence of the supposed "educational
benefits" that come from a racially mixed student body, and there's mounting evidence of harm done to
minorities through academic mismatching.
In Washington, It's
Politics "By Any Means Necessary". The Supreme Court, in a moment of unusual clarity, ruled last week that
the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment did not prohibit states from requiring public universities to treat
applicants of different races equally. Or, in other words, equal protection is not opposed to (14th Amendment)
equal protection. It is a powerful testimony to the Orwellian nature of our legal world that such a question arose
in the first place and that two Justices could be found to dissent from the ruling. The full name of the original
plaintiff, however, reveals much: "Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration and Immigration Rights and
Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary."
Supreme
Court Upholds Michigan Affirmative Action Ban. The justices said in a 6-2 ruling Tuesday [4/22/2014]
that Michigan voters had the right to change their state constitution to prohibit public colleges and universities
from taking account of race in admissions decisions.
Supreme Court upholds Michigan's ban on affirmative action in college
admissions. In upholding a ban on the use of race in admission decisions at Michigan's public
universities, the U.S. Supreme Court didn't end affirmative action — they just very strongly upheld
the right of voters to ban it.
Antonin Scalia faults Sonia Sotomayor for 'doubly shameful' suggestion that
Michigan voters are racist. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia faulted Justice Sonia Sotomayor for making
what he regards as a "shameful" suggestion that the Michigan voters who decided to ban affirmative action in college
admissions were motivated by racism. Scalia wrote a concurring opinion upholding a 2006 ballot initiative that
amended Michigan's constitution to ban affirmative action. [...] Sotomayor, in her dissent, opened by describing three
stages of "the majority" discriminating against racial minorities in the political process, beginning with the Jim Crow
laws that flouted the 15th Amendment.
Krauthammer:
'Leave the decision of affirmative action up to the people. Charles Krauthammer told viewers Tuesday
on "Special Report with Bret Baier" that Tuesdays Supreme Court opinion that effectively ends affirmative action at
public universities in Michigan was a sound decision. "The left is trying to institutionalize affirmative
action to make it impossible for any legislature or any referendum ever to abolish it ever in the history of the
country," the syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor said. "An outrageous proposition that was rejected
by the court." Krauthammer said the issue should be decided on a state-by-state basis.
Court's
affirmative action ruling: A step towards respecting states' rights. With its ruling upholding the right
of Michigan voters to ban racial preferences in state university admissions, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John
Roberts on Tuesday took what legal scholars are saying one more step away from the concept of federal supremacy.
The 6-2 decision reversed a 2012 ruling by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals that struck down the voter initiative on
the grounds that it violated the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, and carved out more power for the states over
Washington in the process.
Raced-Based
Preferences Forever. What was called "racial quotas" in the 1970s and has been referred to as
"affirmative action" since the 1990s is giving way to a new term: "race-sensitive admission policies."
The language shift is telling — race-based preferences are losing intellectual, judicial, and political
support. — Yesterday, the Supreme Court voted six to two to uphold the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
(MCRI), which was passed with support from 58 percent of that state's voters in 2006. It simply enshrines
in Michigan's constitution that the state should not engage in race discrimination. Opponents of the initiative
sued, claiming the measure discriminated against racial minorities who might wish to lobby for preferential treatment.
A
Lack of Affirmative Action Isn't Why Minority Students Are Suffering. In a 6-2 decision, the Court
held that a ballot initiative by Michigan residents to bar the use of race preferences as a factor of admission
was constitutional. On a Court that has consistently issued closely contested opinions — often
in 5-4 decisions — the overwhelming majority of the Justices recognized the importance and the legality
of people in several states like Michigan to prohibit the use of race as a factor in admissions. Despite the
commentary to the contrary which is likely to follow in the coming days, the Court did not address whether colleges
or universities could use race as a factor of admission — they wisely left the decision to the voters
in individual states to make such a decision.
Supreme
Court upholds Michigan's ban on racial preferences in university admissions. The Supreme Court on
Tuesday [4/22/2014] made clear that states are free to prohibit the use of racial considerations in university
admissions, upholding Michigan's constitutional amendment banning affirmative action. By a vote of
6 to 2, the court concluded that it was not up to judges to overturn the 2006 decision by
Michigan voters to bar consideration of race when deciding who gets into the state's universities.
Going Negative On
Affirmative Action. The good news about yesterday's Supreme Court ruling is that it affirmed
the right of the people to ban racial preferences in university admissions. The bad news is that it
didn't go further.
Scalia's plain truth
on affirmative action. [The US Supreme Court] issued a major ruling that upheld Michigan's 2006
constitutional amendment banning the use of affirmative action as a factor for admission in the state's public
universities. That amendment had been adjoined to the state's constitution following an election in which
nearly 4 million votes were cast -- and in which the side supporting the amendment prevailed by
a 16-point margin, 58 percent to 42 percent. No matter; in a highly provocative 2011 ruling,
the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals declared it unconstitutional. The Supreme Court on Tuesday, with a
6-2 vote, threw the 6th Circuit's ludicrous decision onto the trash heap of history's discarded ideas.
Justice
Sotomayor and the affirmative action bitter-enders have lost bigtime. There is a growing body of
experience indicating that the phenomenon known as "mismatch" results in minorities being placed in situations
where they cannot compete with the more-qualified students who received no such preferences. The results
have been high drop-out rates, leaving failed students worse off than if they had been admitted to institutions
where their qualifications were similar to those of other students. This is precisely what has happened
with the end of racial preferences in California following the passage of Proposition 209.
The 'Wise
Latina jumped the shark. Justice Sonia Sotomayor jumped the shark Tuesday with her lengthy dissent
from the Schuette decision, read aloud from the bench. Although the liberal media sympathize with
her and presented the decision as a setback, the positions she took are at variance with both the clear meaning
of the text of the Constitution and with the sentiments of the vast majority of Americans, who consistently vote
against racial preferences whenever they get the chance.
Half
a Win on Racial Discrimination. There's a reason they call it "progressivism" — for
years, the main legal question contested in affirmative-action cases, from Bakke to Grutter,
was whether the state should be allowed to engage in racial discrimination. In the Michigan
affirmative-action case decided today [4/22/2014], Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative
Action, the question was whether the state should be required to engage in racial discrimination.
The progress, then, has followed the Left's familiar ratchet-effect model, inching its way from "not
forbidden" to "compulsory." Indeed, as the Wall Street Journal put it, the question
here was not whether the use of racial discrimination for putatively benevolent purposes is constitutional
but whether states "may end racial preferences without violating the U.S. Constitution."
What Race
Preferences Hide. Any person attempting to overcome hardship can look to Sotomayor for inspiration.
But as she demonstrated in her long, impassioned dissent in the case of Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative
Action, the experience of benefiting from race preferences has left her prickly and defensive on the subject.
As others, including her Supreme Court colleague Justice Clarence Thomas, have argued, that kind of gnawing insecurity
is one of the consequences of preferences. Others are never sure if you've achieved your position entirely on
merit, and neither are you.
Finally getting it right on affirmative action. Every once in
a while a great, conflicted country gets an insoluble problem exactly right. Such is the Supreme Court's ruling
this week on affirmative action. It upheld a Michigan referendum prohibiting the state from discriminating either
for or against any citizen on the basis of race. The Schuette ruling is highly significant for two reasons:
its lopsided majority of 6 to 2, including a crucial concurrence from liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, and,
even more important, Breyer's rationale. It couldn't be simpler. "The Constitution foresees the ballot box,
not the courts, as the normal instrument for resolving differences and debates about the merits of these programs."
Justice
Sonia Sotomayor proves herself not so wise. Justice Sonia Sotomayor this week took the
unusual step of reading her dissent in a case involving state-sponsored affirmative action in
Michigan. In doing so, she showed herself not only petulant to be on the losing side in a 6-2
decision, but unable to divorce her legal reasoning from her own sense of racial grievance. It was
an embarrassing but predictable performance. In 2009, I was one of a handful of witnesses who
testified against Sotomayor's confirmation before the Senate Judiciary Committee. I did so with
sadness, because there is much to admire in Sotomayor's personal history.
Asians Derail
Affirmative Action In California. The express train hurtling to return racial preference
admissions to California — in the form of State Constitutional Amendment 5, which if
placed on the ballot and approved by voters would have overturned Prop. 209 — has just been
derailed by an outburst of opposition from Asian Americans. The eruption of opposition caught SCA 5's
Democratic sponsors by surprise and caused a crucial three Asian American senators to withdraw their support,
depriving the measure of the two thirds senate majority required to place an initiative on the ballot.
Racial
spoils system starting to fall apart in California. California's ruling Democrats are in danger of splintering
their coalition over an attempt to re-introduce affirmative action, which has been banned ever since the passage of
Proposition 209 in 1996, which banned the use of racial preferences by the state, including in higher education.
Racial Preferences
Under Siege. Two recent events, one on the West Coast and one on the East Coast, demonstrate that after
half a century, support for racial preferences in college admissions is getting more and more unsustainable —
both politically and intellectually. In California, liberals have long deplored the 1996 passage of Proposition 209,
which banned racial preferences at state universities. Its backers pointed out that the 1964 Civil Rights Act,
which is often cited as the authority for mandating preferential treatment for racial minorities, actually forbids
all racial discrimination. "It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race," Supreme Court chief
justice John Roberts has concluded.
Supreme Court justices' comments seem
to favor Michigan affirmative action ban. The Supreme Court appeared eager during oral arguments Tuesday [10/15/2013] to uphold a Michigan
ban on affirmative action, with the justices even considering whether they would need to overrule previous precedents to make sure the state's color-blind
school admissions requirement can remain in place.
False Equality in Michigan. Can a state's citizens
amend the state constitution to ban affirmative action programs in public universities, even if the Supreme Court has approved those programs? That
is the question the court is facing this week in the case of Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action. The court last considered an
affirmative action case out of Michigan in 2003, when it upheld the race-conscious admissions policy of the University of Michigan Law School.
Black Skin Privilege.
This collectivist view of guilt and debts that erases individuals and their accountability is now entrenched in America's institutional framework.
In the 1970s, affirmative action was successfully redefined to mean racial preferences for non-whites, and a new standard was set for admissions policies
at universities across the United States. Though black students' median SAT scores in any given year were at least 200 points lower than
the median for white students,' blacks were admitted to virtually all academically competitive schools at much higher rates. [...] Inevitably the
racial bias does not stop with the admissions process. Once a university accepts black students, under-qualified for that school though they
may be, it is imperative that they remain in school and eventually graduate, poor performance notwithstanding.
Elite colleges
confronting failure of affirmative action. A new report from researchers at Georgetown University must be horrifying
diversicrats at elite colleges and universities. The report's title, "Separate and Unequal: How Higher Education Reinforces the
Intergenerational Reproduction of White Racial Privilege," gives away the conclusion of the study. Despite all the efforts at
affirmative action, as a whole, the top tier of colleges is making racial inequality worse, rather than better.
School
Administrators at NC University Allegedly Inflate Grades of African-American Students. Two things immediately come to mind
when reading these allegations: First, not only is it immoral and presumably in violation of the school's honor code to inflate grades
for undeserving students, but it's completely unfair to those whom [sic] worked hard for the grades they undoubtedly earned.
And second, how offensive! The notion that any group of students — merely because of the color of their skin — needs
to be "taken care of" by a small group of "administrators" is repugnant on its face.
Abigail
Fisher says she's confident UT 'won't be able to use race in the future'. Abigail Fisher, a 23-year-old at the center of this
year's Supreme Court case on affirmative action, predicts that Monday's [6/24/2013] decision will mark the end of race-based admissions at
the University of Texas. Just hours after the court sent her case back to the district level, Fisher said the decision brought the
nation "closer to a day when student's race isn't used at all in students' admissions."
Race
discussion may crowd out scandals in wake of Supreme Court affirmative action decision. Get set for a Supreme Court
decision that could alter or even end affirmative action. Or not. Predicting SCOTUS decisions is hazardous, but
Fisher v University of Texas could plunge the nation into heated discussion of the role of racial preferences in education and beyond.
The Real Damage from Racial Preferences in College
Admissions. Three members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Todd Gaziano, Gail Heriot, and Peter Kirsanow, filed an
amicus brief with the Supreme Court in the Fisher case. Their Commission found "extensive empirical research" showing that
"students who attend schools where their entering academic credentials put them in the bottom of the class are less likely to follow
through" pursuing a major in science or engineering than other students with similar credentials "who attend schools where their
credentials put them in the middle or top of the class." The Commission found the same thing to be true in law schools [...]
Even in Medical School, Affirmative Action
Rules. When it comes to becoming a physician, the academic rigors, years of schooling, and personal sacrifice common to the effort are
well-known. This process is a sort of rite of passage, an intellectual marathon that only the best and brightest can complete. As such,
medical schools should select candidates best-suited to excel throughout school and cultivate the skills that will allow them to practice in the best
health care system in the world. The process by which these candidates are selected, however, may come as a shock.
Equal Treatment Under the Law. Ward Connerly says the
Supreme Court's upcoming ruling in Fisher v. University of Texas may help kill racial preferences once and for all.
Another Reason to End Preferences.
Arguably the most notable brief filed in the Supreme Court's big case on affirmative action comes from a pair of lawyers who have just published a book
on the subject. The case is Fisher v. Texas, and the coauthors are Richard Sander, who is also an economist, and Stuart Taylor, the legal
affairs writer. The argument they press is that "the biggest problem for minorities in higher education is no longer race but rather racial
preferences."
The Painful Truth About Affirmative
Action. Affirmative action in university admissions started in the late 1960s as a noble effort to jump-start racial integration and foster
equal opportunity. But somewhere along the decades, it has lost its way. Over time, it has become a political lightning rod and one of our
most divisive social policies. It has evolved into a regime of racial preferences at almost all selective schools — preferences so
strikingly large and politically unpopular that administrators work hard to conceal them.
Supreme
Court may limit use of race in college admissions. More than a half-century after the Supreme Court ordered the University of Texas to
admit a black man to its law school, the sprawling live-oak-and-limestone campus is again the site of a monumental battle over the use of race in
university admissions. But this time the challenge comes from a white woman.
Eric Holder: Racial Preferences Needed
for ... National Security. The Eric Holder Justice Department has filed this brief in the United States Supreme Court defending racial
preferences at the University of Texas. (Texas, by the way, is also vigorously defending the racial preferences.) Abigail Fisher, who is
white, is challenging race preferences that cost her a slot at the University of Texas law school. Because the racial spoils go to Obama's most
loyal political constituency, people of color, naturally Eric Holder's Justice Department is defending them by spending your tax dollars paying lawyers
to write the brief.
Obama Lawyers Urge High Court to Back
Affirmative Action. The Obama administration urged the U.S. Supreme Court to reaffirm the legality of race-based college admissions, as the
justices prepare to review the affirmative action programs that have become fixtures at the nation's top universities. The high court will hear
arguments Oct. 10 on a white woman's contention that she suffered racial discrimination when the University of Texas rejected her application for
admission.
Administration
urges justices to continue college affirmative action admissions. The Obama administration urged the Supreme Court on Monday [8/13/2012] to
continue to allow universities to take race into account when assembling their student bodies, saying the government has a "vital interest" in drawing its
leaders from a diverse pool of college graduates. The administration supported the University of Texas, whose policy of considering race as one
factor in deciding who will be admitted to the flagship university in Austin is being challenged.
You Didn't Build It... because I Didn't Earn It.
It isn't socialism that explains Obama's dismissive "you didn't build that" remark toward people of talent and individual initiative; it's the culture
of affirmative action. As I listened to Obama's silly, if not pathetic, comments, I was reminded of nothing so much as the comments and attitudes
of people like him: the so-called "multicultural" affirmative-action students one encounters in colleges and universities. These are
people who, like Obama, earned little except a greased skid because of the color of their skin. [...] Obama knows he didn't have what it took to
get into Columbia, and he didn't have what it took to get into Harvard Law. Let's face an inescapable reality. If Obama had great grades,
his transcripts would be in a full-page ad in the New York Times.
Appeals
court upholds California affirmative action ban in state university admissions. Affirmative action proponents took a hit
Monday [4/2/2012] as a federal appeals court panel upheld California's ban on using race, ethnicity and gender in admitting students
to public colleges and universities.
Infinite
Affirmative Action? Later this year, the Supreme Court will review the constitutionality of the
use of racial preferences in college admissions in the case of Fisher v. University of Texas. The
battle lines will once again be drawn over the meaning of the equal-protection provisions of the Constitution.
So it's noteworthy that Attorney General Eric Holder has just made it clear he's never bumped into a racial
preference he didn't like, and that he sees no time limit on such policies.
Supreme
Court to hear challenge to college affirmative action. The Supreme Court is wading into the sticky issue of
race as a factor in college admissions, setting the stage for a highly charged legal debate in the middle of a presidential
race over the constitutionality of affirmative-action policies in higher education. The high court said Tuesday [2/21/2012]
that it would hear this fall a challenge brought by a college student, Abigail Fisher, who says her civil rights were
violated when she was denied entry to the University of Texas because she is white. It is the first university
affirmative-action case in nearly a decade.
SCOTUS may scrap affirmative
action. It's time to end affirmative action in higher education. Even Justice Sandra Day O'Connor
envisioned an end to it. In her majority opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger, which allows colleges and
universities to use race in their admissions process, she wrote, "We expect that 25 years from now, the use
of racial preferences will no longer be necessary..." It's been nine years since that decision, and the high
court is once again set to revisit the issue in a case brought by a white student who was denied a spot at the
University of Texas.
Could
Justice Alito's Vote Change the Game? At issue is a lawsuit brought by Abigail Fisher, a white student, who
said she was denied admission to the University of Texas because of the color of her skin. If the justices vote
to hear the case, it could mean a majority of the court is willing to curtail or further restrict race-conscious
admissions policies at public universities.
How Smart
Is Obama, Anyway? [Scroll down] Indeed, the great majority of elite black law students are
beneficiaries of racial preferences. A 2005 study* found:
"...without affirmative action, African American enrollment at the first-tier schools would decline by over
four-fifths and at each of the next two tiers by approximately two-thirds."
Pro-Male Affirmative
Action. In a culture quick to claim victim status, the existence of a concerted effort to
hush up systematic discrimination may seem surprising — particularly when that discrimination
is against women. Yet as the University of San Diego law professor Gail Heriot and Alison Somin write
in the Federalist Society's Engage, there's been a notable lack of public debate about pro-male bias in
the college admission process. It's an open secret, they explain, that a growing number of colleges are
holding male and female applicants to different standards to inflate the number of male students.
Preferences slow minority
advancement. The Supreme Court faces a discomfiting decision. If it chooses, as it should, to
hear a case concerning racial preferences in admissions at the University of Texas, the court will confront evidence
of its complicity in harming the supposed beneficiaries of preferences the court has enabled and encouraged.
Justice
Department: Diversity trumps 1964 anti-discrimination law. The Justice Department is telling
university administrators they can grant valuable university slots to people in favored races and ethnic
groups. The department's legal advice, announced late on Friday [12/2/2011], says "race can be outcome
determinative for some participants in some circumstances," when administrators are weighing who gets acceptance
letters from private and government-funded universities. But the letter also highlights advocates' growing
worries about a pending Supreme Court decision that could ban the use of race in awarding university slots.
Racial
Preferences in Wisconsin. The campus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison erupted this week
after the release of two studies documenting the heavy use of race in deciding which students to admit to
the undergraduate and law schools. The evidence of discrimination is undeniable, and the reaction by
critics was undeniably dishonest and thuggish.
A
Horrible Racial Preference Ruling in Michigan. On Friday [7/1/2011], a panel from the Sixth
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Michigan's ban on affirmative action. In a split decision,
Judges R. Guy Cole, Jr. and Martha Craig Daughtrey had the presumption to overturn the wishes of
a solid majority of Michigan voters who had approved the ban in a 2006 referendum ("Proposal 2").
The idea that two individuals could presume to annul the actions of a democratic majority is troubling.
Far more troubling is the fact that, rather than interpret the law as established by the referendum, a federal
court has decided once again to legislate from the bench.
Mich. Ban On Race In College Admissions
Illegal. A federal appeals court on Friday struck down Michigan's ban on the consideration of race
and gender in college admissions, saying it burdens minorities and violates the U.S. Constitution. The
2-1 decision upends a sweeping law that forced the University of Michigan and other public schools to change
admission policies. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the law, approved by voters in 2006,
violates the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.
The Editor says...
The court is saying, in effect, that reverse discrimination is necessary to insure "Equal Protection."
The court is also saying that elections don't matter as much as the opinions of
activist judges.
University Insiders: Illegal
Immigrants Get Affirmative Action. This week, Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley signed a bill to require the
state's public universities to give undocumented aliens — generally illegal — in-state tuition
privileges. The bill, known as the Dream Act, is already the law in ten other states, including California, New York,
Texas and Illinois. But critics argue that the bill will give illegal aliens better treatment than Americans and
legal immigrants — thanks to existing diversity policies at universities.
The White Man's Burden.
[Scroll down] What also occurred to me while filling out the application is that every special category exists
aside from that of a white, straight male. If someone is gay or a woman or a person of color, the welcome mat
is laid out. But what about an ordinary Joe, a working-class stiff from Toledo? How does he get into
college when all the recruitment efforts are aimed at others?
Bias and Bigotry in Academia.
A decade ago, activist Ron Unz conducted a study of the ethnic and religious composition of the student
body at Harvard. Blacks and Hispanics, Unz found, were then being admitted to his alma mater in
numbers approaching their share of the population. And who were the most underrepresented Americans
at Harvard? White Christians and ethnic Catholics. Though two-thirds of the U.S. population
then, they had dropped to one-fourth of the student body.
Is
Arizona Law Still Wrong If It Works? [Scroll down] Imagine you're an American kid of
Chinese ancestry. Given your SAT scores and GPA, you should be able to get into, say, the University of
Michigan. But because of Michigan's race-based policies, you're turned down because you're not black or
Hispanic. That's not just inconvenient, that's a lifetime loss. You'll never be able to go to that
school. Period. Similarly, being turned down for a job you deserve because of your skin color is a
real loss.
Federal suit planned
against UC over ban on affirmative action. Seeking to increase the ranks of black, Latino and
Native American students at the University of California, civil rights activists said they will file a federal
lawsuit Tuesday [2/16/2010] challenging the state law that bans affirmative action in admissions.
Suit says college singled
out blacks. A former dean of the State University of New York at Cobleskill has filed a
whistleblower lawsuit against the school, saying it discriminated against black students by keeping them in
school for their tuition dollars when administrators knew they had no chance of earning a degree.
The Racism of
Diversity. Let's go over what the Naval Academy sees as an artificial achievement barrier.
A black candidate with B and C grades, with no particular leadership qualities, and 500 on both
portions of the SAT, is virtually guaranteed admittance. A white student, who's not an athlete, with such
scores is deemed not qualified. Many black students are admitted to the Naval Academy through remedial
training at the Naval Academy Preparatory School (NAPS) in Newport, R.I., which is a one-year post-secondary
school. Finishing the year with a 2.0 GPA, a C average, almost guarantees admission to the
academy. A C average for remedial work is nothing to write home about. Occasionally, when
students don't make the 2.0 GPA target, the target is renegotiated downward.
Compensatory
discrimination … by any means necesssary. You may think racial and sexual discrimination is
(usually) wrong. But whether you call it "affirmative action" or "reverse discrimination," compensatory
racial and sex preference remains in wide use by governments and institutions of higher learning, for hiring,
contracts, and college admissions. A man named Ward Connerly has taken up the policy as his to fight.
"Study, Study,
Study" — A Bad Career Move. About five years ago, shortly before my term ended as a
Regent of the University of California (UC), I was having a casual conversation with a very high-ranking UC
administrator about a proposal that he was developing to increase "diversity" at UC in a manner that would
comply with the dictates of California's Constitution and the prohibition against race, gender and ethnic
preferences. As I listened to his proposal, I asked him why he considered it important to tinker with
admissions instead of just letting the chips fall where they may. In an unguarded moment, he told me that
unless the university took steps to "guide" admissions decisions, UC would be dominated by Asians.
Vicious
Academic Liberals. Hypocrisy is part and parcel of the liberal academic elite. But the
American people, who fund universities either as parents, donors or taxpayers, should not accept this
evilness and there's a good way to stop it — cut off the funding to racially discriminating
colleges and universities.
Academic Mismatch I. Which serves
the interests of the black community better: a black student admitted to a top-tier law school, such as Harvard,
Stanford or Yale, and winds up in the bottom 10 percent of his class, flunks out, or cannot pass the bar
examination, or a black student admitted to a far less prestigious law school, performs just as well as his
white peers, graduates and passes the bar?
America's
Universities Are Living a Diversity Lie. Thirty years ago this past week, Supreme Court Justice
Lewis F. Powell Jr. condemned our nation's selective colleges and universities to live a lie.
Writing the deciding opinion in the case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, he prompted
these institutions to justify their use of racial preferences in admissions with a rationale most had never
considered and still do not believe — a desire to offer a better education to all students. To this
day, few colleges have even tried to establish that their race-conscious admissions policies yield broad
educational benefits.
The New
Jews? A young man who was brought to the United States as a toddler, Jian Li, has
shaken up the civil rights establishment and Ivy League colleges and rekindled a fierce debate over
racial preferences at America's elite institutions of higher learning. For parents and applicants
navigating the college admissions process, Li has stoked fears that the deck is stacked against even
the most able students.
Affirmative
Distraction: Thirty years ago last week, the Supreme Court handed down its Bakke decision, hoping to
end the argument over the constitutionality of affirmative action in college admission. But with hindsight,
it's clear that the justices mainly helped hasten the end of serious discussion about racial justice in America.
As they set the stage for a lasting argument over who should get into college, the wound of race continued to fester,
unhealed, and our politics moved on.
Racial
discrimination on the ballot in Michigan. Discrimination by race has never had such respectable
defenders as it is garnering in Michigan right now. It is backed by the Democratic governor and her
Republican opponent. By the ACLU and the Michigan Catholic Conference. By General Motors and
Ford. They are all rallying against the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, a ballot measure that would
eliminate racial preferences for "public employment, education or contracting purposes." That includes,
most controversially, college admissions. Racial preferences in admissions have now achieved a status
close to free speech and tenure as operating principles of American higher education.
Opponent of racial
preferences takes quest to Michigan. California's champion of color-blind college admissions has
made his way to Michigan and is aggressively promoting a measure similar to Proposition 209, which outlawed the
use of racial preferences in admissions to California's public colleges 10 years ago.
Update:
Michigan Prefers Equality. Ward
Connerly has done it again: A striking 58% of Michigan voters gave the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
a thumbs up; only three counties voted against it. The language of the MCRI closely tracks California's
1996 Proposition 209, also led by Mr. Connerly. It amends the Michigan Constitution to "ban public
institutions from using affirmative-action programs that give preferential treatment to groups or individuals
based on their race, gender, color, ethnicity or national origin for public employment, education or
contracting purposes."
White teen sues UT over admissions policy.
An 18-year-old Sugar Land student sued the University of Texas at Austin on Monday [4/7/2008], challenging the
school's use of racial preferences in its admissions policy.
Blacks Against Busing: The January
1994 edition of the newsletter of the National Association for Neighborhood Schools reports on two Missouri officials, both
black, who oppose the continued forced busing of children. St. Louis Mayor Freeman Bosley questions the point of
sending almost 14,000 black youngsters out of their own neighborhoods, instead of working to improve the nearby schools
and making them safe for all.
Mismatching Students for Dollars.
Reactions among academics have been all too predictable to the decision of the 5th Circuit of Appeals, banning the
affirmative action admissions policy at the University of Texas law school. The president of the university says that
a ban on affirmative action would lead to the "virtual resegregation of higher education." A professor at the law
school predicted, "You will have lily-white universities across the United States." Time will prove how ridiculous
these remarks are but, even before that happens, it is worth understanding why.
Dumbing Down America's
Colleges: Wake Forest University, Bates, Bowdoin, and a few other small schools have recently
decided to make the SAT optional for students applying for admission. Their argument for getting rid of
these tests is that it will fling open the doors to "diversity" among the student body. Wake Forest
President Nathan Hatch made the ludicrous claim that jettisoning the SAT would help the school, "move closer
to the goals of greater educational quality and opportunity."
Goodbye SAT? "By making
the SAT and ACT optional, we hope to broaden the applicant pool and increase access at Wake Forest for groups
of students who are currently underrepresented at selective universities," said Martha Allman, director of
admissions, in the WFU's new release. She argued that downplaying the role of standardized tests would
demonstrate how the university values "individual academic achievement" and "talent and character." The
change is also supposed to help "diversify" college's application base.
State Bar of California, Civil Rights Group Spar Over
Affirmative Action. "Currently only about one in three African-Americans who goes to an American law
school passes the bar on the first attempt and a majority never become lawyers at all," says UCLA law professor
Richard Sander. In an article published in the Stanford Law Review, Sander and his research team concluded
several thousand would-be black lawyers either dropped out of law school or failed to pass the bar because of
affirmative action.
Ending Racial Preferences: It's About
Time. The Educational Opportunity Program started out with great promise … but it soon
transmogrified into a program that lowered standards and radicalized students in the process. The
university not only admitted students whose academic preparation made it nearly impossible for them to
succeed, but it permitted many to remain in school despite failing grades. Worse, the program's
organizers encouraged students to take largely segregated ethnic studies courses, whose primary purpose
was to forge ethnic solidarity and reinforce students' feelings that they were victims of a racist society
bent on their destruction.
Affirmative Action Backfires.
Three years ago, UCLA law professor Richard Sander published an explosive, fact-based study of the consequences of
affirmative action in American law schools in the Stanford Law Review. … Easily the most startling conclusion
of his research: Mr. Sander calculated that there are fewer black attorneys today than there would
have been if law schools had practiced color-blind admissions — about 7.9% fewer by his reckoning.
Homie-phobia:
The other day, a guy at work was telling me about another university employee who has been siphoning gas from
one of the university vehicles. It's understandable that he'd want to steal gas. … But the funny thing
is that the university appears unwilling to do anything about what seems to be an obvious case of larceny.
And, oh yes, I forgot to mention that the employee just happens to be a black male.
Getting Beyond Race: Despite
what affirmative action supporters often imply, academic ability matters. Although some students will
outperform their entering credentials and some students will underperform theirs, most students will succeed
in the range that their high school grades and SAT scores predict. Leapfrogging minority candidates into
elite colleges where they often become frustrated and fail hurts them even more than the institutions.
It creates the illusion that we are closing racial disparities in education when in fact we are not.
Black Student Enrollment at UCLA Plunges.
Many critics put the blame squarely on Proposition 209, a ballot measure backed by former UC Regent Ward
Connerly, which outlawed racial preferences in admissions. Since the law took effect a decade ago,
black enrollment at UCLA has dropped 57 percent. But Connerly says inferior schools are at
fault, not his law. … Last year, more than 45,000 students applied to UCLA. Connerly says there are
simply too few blacks who make the grade on the only standard that should count: academic merit.
Michigan voters approved discrimination ban, but opponents of the measure persist.
Court Battle
Likely on Affirmative Action. In the wake of a decisive Nov. 7 vote to prohibit race- and
gender-based preferences in employment, education and contracting, leaders in government and academia who
fought to preserve affirmative action are now hurrying to assess the impact. Officials said the response
is likely to start with a court challenge.
[Why have elections if the losers head straight to court?
More updates:
UW admissions talks draw crowd.
Ward Connerly, who has been fighting affirmative action across the country for more than a decade, addressed
the committee at a hearing at the state Capitol. His appearance drew hundreds of university students,
most of them minorities, who turned out to express their support for the policy.
Legal fight against racial
ban intensifies. The ACLU and NAACP filed suit Tuesday [12/19/2006] against Proposal 2, the
latest salvo in a growing assault just four days before Michigan's ban on affirmative action was to take
effect. The challenge was filed on the same day a federal judge agreed to give three Michigan universities
a six-month delay before they stop using race as a consideration in admissions and financial aid.
Elites to Anti-Affirmative-Action Voters:
Drop Dead. In 1996, Californians voted to ban race and gender preferences in government and
education. Ten years later, the chancellor of the state-funded University of California at Berkeley,
Robert Birgeneau, announced a new Vice Chancellorship for Equity and Inclusion, charged with making Berkeley
more "inclusive" and "less hostile" to "underrepresented minority ... groups." This move is just the
latest expression of the University of California's unrelenting resistance to the 1996 voter initiative, in
every way possible short of patent violation.
Delay of Affirmative Action Ban
Rejected. A federal appeals court on Friday ordered Michigan's universities to stop using
affirmative action in admissions immediately — rejecting an agreement approved by a lower court to
let the institutions keep affirmative action for the current admissions cycle. The appeals court's
analysis also suggested that groups challenging Michigan's new statewide ban on affirmative action face
an uphill climb.
Guilty by admission: Elite colleges violate the
law. Using racial preferences to achieve a particular racial mix of students has been illegal for
at least the last twenty years. Yet many schools persist in treating applicants differently by race in
order to achieve racial diversity. The lingering presence of unlawful racial preferences makes applying
to college or professional school all the more difficult and admissions decisions all the more arbitrary.
Students need to know whether they are being treated in accordance with the law.
"Studies
Prove": Part III. A few years ago, a book by William Bowen and Derek Bok paraded various
statistics that they interpreted as proving the success of policies of preferential admission of blacks to
colleges and universities. A chorus of praise for this study was heard throughout the media and echoed
in academia and among liberal politicians. The study was later cited in a landmark Supreme Court decision
on affirmative action. Not everyone thought this was a great study, however — or even an
adequate study. But no one was allowed access to the raw data on which the Bowen and Bok study was
based. So no one else could run the numbers for themselves and reach their own conclusions.
University of Michigan's Racial Quotas go to the
U.S. Supreme Court. Justices Scalia and Thomas wrote in their dissenting opinion against racial
preferences in the Michigan law school case (Grutter v. Bollinger): "…the University of Michigan
Law School's mystical 'critical mass' justification for its discrimination by race challenges even the most
gullible mind. The admissions statistics show it to be a sham to cover a scheme of racially proportionate
admissions."
Back to the 1950s:
Africentric school to open in 2009.
After years of debate that has divided communities of every colour, Toronto's public school board voted tonight
to open an Africentric alternative school in September 2009. The junior kindergarten to Grade 5
school — believed to be a first in Canada — is expected to help tackle a 40 percent dropout
rate among black students.
Half a
century after Brown: The key fallacy underlying the civil rights vision
was that all black economic lags were due to racial discrimination. That assumption
has survived to this day, in the courts, in the media, in academia, and above all in politics.
Half
a century after Brown: Part II. Medical authorities have long recognized
that a quack remedy that is harmless in itself can nevertheless be fatal in its effects,
if it keeps sick people from getting the treatment that can cure them. Racial mixing
and matching has been the great quack remedy for the educational lags of black school
children that has substituted for higher standards and harder work.
Half a
century after Brown: Part III. Although Brown v. Board of Education dealt
with race and with schools, its judicial philosophy spread rapidly to issues having
nothing to do with race or schools. In the half century since Brown, judges at
all levels have become unelected legislators imposing the vision of the political left
across a wide spectrum.
Does
affirmative action produce more black lawyers? A new and provocative study on affirmative action,
which will appear in the Stanford Law Review this month, is attracting such attention that there is a special
click-through on the publication's Web site to field questions about it. The conclusions of the study,
that racial preferences at law schools produce fewer rather than more black lawyers, is already generating
controversy that is sure to only increase.
Black English May Create Yet Another Wall Around the Ghetto: The
Oakland school board has voted to recognize the lingo of blacks in inner-cities — which they haughtily label Ebonics
(a combination of "ebony" and "phonics") — as a second language. They are now going to apply for federal funds
to set up a bilingual education program of English and "Ebonics."
Modern
Myths about Race and School Performance: Fifty years after the Supreme
Court's Brown vs. Board of Education ruling, the debate about race and academic
performance has in many places gone terribly off the mark.
Call it as it is.
There's considerable unnecessary confusion and debate on public policy issues that would be more intelligently
discussed and resolved if we'd say what is actually meant rather than using euphemistic disguises.
Multilateral
Race Preferences: As Weekly Standard publisher Terry Eastland
noted, we didn't fight a civil war to end legacy admissions. Who cares what Breyer
personally thinks about legacies or anything else for that matter? In America, we
do not substitute justices' personal judgments of fairness for the text of
the Constitution.
For
what purpose? It has been said that, when Ronald Reagan was governor of
California, someone told him that admitting students to the University of California on
individual performance alone could mean that all the students at Berkeley might be
Asian Americans. "So what?" was the Gipper's response.
"Affirmative Action" and College Graduation
Rates: When racial preferences were ended in California, there was much hysteria in the media,
with dire predictions that blacks would be kept out of higher education. Just recently, with much less
publicity, the fact has come out that there are now more black students in the University of California system
than there were when racial preferences and quotas were in effect.
Stifling Black
Students: Civil-rights leaders, white liberals and college administrators seem to be more
concerned with black student enrollment rates and the heck with whether they graduate.
Education of Blacks in America:
Do Facts Matter? Part I: When elite liberal institutions like Stanford, Berkeley and the Ivy League
colleges have been scenes of racial apartheid and racial tensions on campus, have more conservative institutions that
have resisted quotas and preferences been better or worse in these respects?
Education of Blacks in
America: Do Facts Matter? Part II: Facts about other successful black schools,
past and present, get very little attention from the intelligentsia because the stories of these schools would
not forward the agendas of the left. In short, history is treated as just the continuation of politics by
other means.
Dumbing
Down Higher Education. Come November, voters in several states will not only be picking the next
president but deciding whether they want to end a system of racial preferences in public higher education and
government hiring and contracting. In 2006, voters in Michigan struck down racial preferences, as did
Californians and Washingtonians a decade earlier, and as many as five states will have that opportunity this
year if proposed initiatives in those states qualify for the ballot. But a new move is afoot to try to
circumvent the intent of those initiatives in higher education.
Of course he's a socialist.
[President Obama] apparently believes that the people of color of all races — Chinese, Malays,
Native Americans, Cubans, Hawaiians, Andaman Islanders, Indonesians, Eskimos, Philipinos, Africans, and even
Muslims — have been systematically persecuted by whites. That is bizarrely wrong as a point
of fact, if you just look at the actual majority of Asian kids in some of the best American universities
today; or if you look at the decades of foreign aid Americans have given to poor nations.
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